Having spent the last two weeks writing funding proposals (and with next week being number three), my own writing has taken a bit of a back seat. Times like this I find myself more and more relying on exercises to give my muse the jolt needed to get the lazy sod out of bed and …
Poetry, judgement, and the Oh God of Earthquakes
On Thursday night I was at the monthly meeting of the South Island Writers' Association, to present the results of the Jean Ruddenklau Poetry Trophy for 2012. It was the first time I'd managed to deliver judgement in person, and was an … interesting experience. The competition itself was quite tricky to judge. Usually you …
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Turns, Endings, and The Point of High Windows
I'm currently devouring a new book, Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns. My god, it’s good. It's based on an idea that I've just started exploring from a properly theoretical point of view, (although I’ve mentioned a variation in an earlier post) – deliberate, formal ways of opening a poem out beyond itself. So far …
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Saving the night
(Originally I was going to add the word “sky” to the title of this post, but I like the possibilities suggested without it.) In an interesting bit of co-incidence, it’s just been announced that 4300 square kilometres of the MacKenzie Basin has been declared a Dark Sky Reserve – the biggest in the world. How …
Venus in Transit
I'm beginning to worry that I have lost the ability to just write a poem. Yesterday I was supposed to be working on a poem that I've had in my "working on it" file since 2009. It's a nice piece, and is going in interesting directions. Reading Lynn Davidson's Common Land (I’m reviewing it for Takahē) …
A Dark Feathered Art 